The gameplay is a staple platformer in the vein of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie—have SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy travel around several different levels spread throughout Bikini Bottom. They battle Plankton's robot cronies and solve obstacles and puzzles while collecting Golden Spatulas to help you get around.

Tropes:

Abnormal Ammo: SpongeBob attacks with bubble constructs and a bubble wand. The Tar-Tar robot attacks you by shooting boiling hot tartar sauce, while the robots Chuck and Slick attack with water balloon missiles and oil. Robo-Patrick sprays radioactive ice-cream sludge all over the place. The final boss, SpongeBot SteelPants, attacks you by literally sending the words KAH-RAH-TAE flying at you.

Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: True to his nature, Mr. Krabs will charge higher Shiny Object prices with each subsequent trade for Golden Spatulas. In addition, the toll clams will become more expensive the farther into the game you get, so you better start grinding while you can.

Always Chaotic Evil: The robots seem to be destroying Bikini Bottom for no clear reason other than to cause havoc on their own whim, although they were created by Plankton.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Technically averted. Plankton's robots betray him because the lever is set to Don't Obey. Played straight at the final boss.

Airborne Mook: Chuck and Monsoon, especially the latter who flies out of your reach.

And I Must Scream: In the Mermalair, the boss of that level is "Prawn", an old archfoe of Mermaidman who was kept frozen in the lair's prison for years until he was accidentally thawed out. After defeating him, he returns to his chum prison.

Anti-Frustration Features: In order to prevent excessive backtracking for the player, the games menu allows you to warp to certain locations in the game where you have a spatula to find, or have already found.

Attack Its Weak Point: Robo-Patrick is normally invincible all over, but he has a weak point in his backside, covered by the conspiculously placed "Kick Me" sticky note. SpongeBot SteelPants takes this up to eleven, as he has numerous glowing generator bulbs around its body, which can only be destroyed by the Cruise Bubble or other types of moves depending on where you're positioned and if you're able to aim them.

Awesome, yet Impractical: The Spongeball move; sure it helps you get around faster than usual, but you can't attack in it, it can be very hard to control, and one hit or a button press immediately cancels the move.

Big Bad: Plankton, although he spends most of the game as much a victim of his machines as anyone else. This is spot is later taken by Robot Plankton.

Bigger on the Inside: In the second phase of the final battle, SpongeBot SteelPants had already grown huge to begin with, but the inside of him is big enough to hold Cronos from God of War, and still have room to move around in!

Border Patrol: Every level and hub world is surrounded by dotted lines indicating the edge of the level/hub. If you try to go outside these dotted lines, whoever you're playing as will shift into a unique running animation before being dragged off the screen by a live-action hand and being put back at the last checkpoint.

Chokepoint Geography: The game uses the golden spatulas to allow you access to new levels, and the hub and some levels are surrounded by red lines that, when crossed, result in the player being taken back to the regular hub.

Colossus Climb: The second phase of the SpongeBot SteelPants battle has the machine grow to such an immense size, that the entire final battle is fought inside of it!

Collector of the Strange: Patrick has a large collection of smelly socks, which must be collected and delivered to him in exchange for Golden Spatulas.

Continuity Nod: The game is full of references to events and characters from the show.

Crate Expectations: Tikis, which contain Shiny Objects. There are five types of them in the game: a Wooden Tiki, a Floating Tiki, a Thunder Tiki, a Shh Tikinote Disappears out of sight if you get too close to them and only SpongeBob can sneak up on them directly, and a Stone Tikinote Completely immune to any means of attack other than an explosion from a Thunder Tiki and the Cruise Bubble.

Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Most apparent if you are switching over from The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie Game to this or vice versa, since both games play similarly to each other. Because the aforementioned game is a later installment to this one, you'll find that some of SpongeBob's and Patrick's moves are assigned to different buttons than what you would be normally used to which can sometimes lead to confusion on both ends.

Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You are returned to a checkpoint when you die, and that's it. Because certain things reset upon death, certain areas challenges avert this, such as one of the slides in Sand Mountain where you must destroy all 8 sandmen located at various places on the slide. They reset if you die.

Developers' Foresight: During the Robot Sandy fight, the Fish Announcer will be in the audience, next to King Neptune. Like in all boss fights, he pops up on the side of the screen to make a comment. If you face the Announcer during the fight and trigger a comment (Like taking a hit or dealing a hit.) both the pop-in and the one in the audience will have exact lip-sync for their comment.

Elite Mook: Some of the oil slick throwing robots, named Slick, from late in the game. They have a shield that can come back after a short period of time, (And attacking the shield with the basic attack will only hurt you.) they attack by flinging oil, which not only hurts you, but also messes up movement. And they can take three hits, which is a lot considering this game.

Evil Laugh: SpongeBot SteelPants gives a particularly creepy, metallic version of SpongeBob's laugh whenever SpongeBob gets hit. Most-if-not all mooks will laugh or taunt you every time they score a successful hit against you (and the major bosses; who can't be left vulnerable while taunting regardless).

Felony Misdemeanor: The reason that Prawn is Mermaidman's arch enemy: he put all of Mermaidman's white clothes in the washer... with a red sock.

Mermaidman: Everything I owned turned pink! PINK!

Fisticuffs Boss: Well not exactly bosses per se, but in the "Hide Me Money" minigame in the PC version, Mr. Krabs must engage in Punch-Out!!-esque combat with some pirate robots in order to obtain some key items. The difficulty increases with each robot you defeat.

SpongeBot SteelPants is fought alongside Robo-Plankton, who will come in to fire a barrage of lasers at you once SpongeBot is stunned. This could count as a Dual Boss but seeing as how it's only SpongeBot that needs to be defeated, Robo-Plankton is just a major enemy to deal with once it's his turn to attack.

In additon, the two earlier bosses, King Jellyfish and Prawn, will start spawning enemies into the battle once they take one hit.

The Goomba: Jellyfish are the first enemies you meet in the game. While they can hurt Spongebob if he get's too near, they're not aggressive and easy to beat, but they don't drop any Shiny Objects. The second enemy you meet in the game, appropriately named "Fodder", is not only the most common mook early on, but also the easiest to dispatch (after the jellyfish).

Gone Horribly Wrong: From two perspectives—Plankton who succeeded in getting his Duplicatotron to work and thus build up his robot army, but forgot to set the lever to "obey" resulting in them turning against him. From SpongeBob's perspective, he believes he and Patrick's wish to have more toy robots to play with was the root of all the the havoc the robots are wreaking.

Grievous Harm with a Body: You can smack robots into other robots to damage them. Patrick can stun larger robots with a shockwave and pick them up to throw at other robots.

Ground Pound: The Bubble Stomp for SpongeBob, and a belly flop for Patrick. Patrick's is unique in that it sends a shockwave which can kill weaker foes, or stun stronger enemies, allowing him to pick them up and throw them. Both of them can use this to hit buttons, which is Sandy's only weakness.

Guide Dang It!: The "Goo Tanker Ahoy" and "A Path Through The Goo" missions left many players baffled. Both of these missions are in the Flying Dutchman's Graveyard level, and give players almost no indication on how to complete them. The trick here is to aim at the tanker hatch where the goo is leaking out with the Cruise Bubble to close it, thus lowering the goo level to allow access to these Golden Spatulas.

Heart Container: Scattered throughout the Hub Level are 3 pairs of Golden Underpants that SpongeBob can collect, with each one increasing his hitpoint capacity by one.

Hijacked by Ganon: Plankton spends most of the game trying to be the Big Bad. However, by the time he gets back to the Chum Bucket, he finds that his robotic copy, Robo-Plankton has taken control of his scheme.

Holiday Mode: When your system's calendar is set to certain days of the year, the Tubelets' flames change color to: Rainbow on New Year's Day, green on St. Patrick's Day, pink on April Fool's Day, red, white, and blue on the Fourth of July, and a pumpkin-y yellow-orange on Halloween.

Humongous Mecha: SpongeBot SteelPants, the final boss. You go inside of it! The other two robot bosses are also pretty big.

Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: By destroying multiple tikis and defeating multiple robots in a short amount of time, you'll earn combos which will reward you with bonus Shiny Objects. The more tikis and robots destroyed, the larger the combo, which increases to Super Combo, Ultra Combo, Mega Combo, and so on. The largest combo is the Super-Ultra-Mega-Monster Combo, which would give Killer Instinct a run for its money.

There's also the Ham-Mer enemy. SpongeBob states: "Ham-Mer...*laughs* I get it!"

In-Name-Only: The GBA and PC versions have the same plot as the console versions, but they have absolutely no gameplay similarities. The GBA game is a 2D Platformer whose only playable character is Spongebob, and the PC game is a Minigame Game.

Jack-of-All-Stats: SpongeBob, of course! Not so much numerical "stats" (there are none to speak of in this game), but he has average mobility (can stall his descent once by attacking while airborne, while Sandy can lasso for a few seconds and Patrick can't do anything), the inferior ground-pound (cannot move after inputting, while Patrick can maneuver mid ground-pound and Sandy can't do it at all), and a flexible attack. Subverted later on when he unlocks his most potent attacks.

Jump Scare: If you're not careful around the Sleepy Time robots, their loud and sudden attack can very much catch you off guard.

G-Love cannot usually be directly attacked by the normal attack as its spins, you will have to stomp them, lasso them or use projectiles to hit them, or attack when it's not spinning.

Monsoon flies directly out of reach of your normal attack and Bubble Bowl, so you have to use a Bubble Bash, Cruise Bubble, thrown object or a lasso to take it down.

Sleepytime will repel the Bubble Bowl at any range besides point-blank and will attack you with an instant-hit laser if you move too quickly around it. Sneak up on it or use the Cruise Missile or other projectiles to beat it.

Slick has an oil shield that has to be taken down with a projectile or else you will take damage if you hit it.

You need to kill the Tubelet's top section before the bottom ones, otherwise it will use an explosion attack that regenerates all three of them!

Laser Hallway: In the art museum in Rock Bottom, SpongeBob has to shut these down in order to get further.

Late-Arrival Spoiler: If you haven't seen the episode Bubble Buddy, this game spoils the fact that Bubble Buddy is actually sentient.

Level in Boss Clothing: The second phase of SpongeBot Steelpants plays out like a level instead, where you go inside his body to destroy his circuits. The only threats you'll be facing in this phase are the robots and Robo-Plankton.

Monsoon, a irritating flying robot capable of summoning thunderclouds to attack you. The only ways to defeat him is to use SpongeBob's Bubble Uppercut or Cruise Bubble, Patrick's Throw Fruit, or Sandy's Lasso.

Bomb-Bot: A small robot that slowly chases you around and makes a small explosion after several seconds. They're even less harmful than Fodder, because you can easily smack them away long before they can detonate.

Chomp-Bot: An Angry Guard Dog like robot, that attacks by belching toxic gas at you.

Sleepy Time: A security robot that is normally asleep, but if you should step into his surrounding light without sneaking (only possible with SpongeBob), it will angrily awake and will quickly use a homing laser to chew off your health in a hurry. You can't use the Bubble Bowl (It will deflect it with the laser), but you can use the Cruise Missile, or throw a Tiki as Patrick in a couple of cases.

Slick: An enemy you meet late in the game, is easily the toughest enemy in the game to beat. To begin with, he's protected by an oil shield, and even after that is destroyed, he takes two more hits to take down, and its entirely possible for him to respawn the shield. His penchant for spitting oil at you, which can impede your movement if it lands on the ground, makes him only more irritating.

Arf & Arf-Dawg: Another irritating tough mook, Arf is a cowboy robot that attacks from a long distance, sending exploding dog-robots at you. The only safe way to attack him is with the Bubble Bowl, as his dawgs will mow your health down well before you can reach him, and he takes more than one hit to take down, and he will swing his doghouse at you if you get too close. While the Cruise Bubble can kill him in one hit, using it makes you an easy target for his dawgs.

Tube-Let, a trio of innertube donning robots. The bottom one uses a flamethrower to attack you, but killing one of them causes the top robot to explosively revive any fallen robots, unless destroyed in time.

Bzzt-Bot, a group of small, one-eyed robots that float around and use pseudo-psychic beam attacks to hurt you. Unlike Fodder and Bomb-Bot, though they die in one hit, they stay away from the character and use the beam. A group of them can get in a hit or two.

Mighty Glacier: Patrick Star. Easily the worst jumper (he's the only character who can't attack in mid-air) but his main gimmick is picking things up and throwing them, with great accuracy.

Mundane Utility: Those crystals you collected for Barnacle Boy in the Kelp Forest? They help him clip his nose hairs at super speed!

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: In the Carnival section of Goo Lagoon, Mr. Krabs asks Patrick to take out the robot controlling the ticket booth. Unfortunately, Pat does his job too well, as his destruction of the ticket booth results in parts of the Carnival falling apart (albeit allowing him to progress further and getting rid of all the other robots). If you go back to Mr. Krabs after destroying the ticket booth, he'll say this.

No Ontological Inertia: Plankton, when he finally gets back to the Chum Bucket, assumes putting a "obey" sign over "not obey" will cause the robots to obey him. Subverted in that the robots are obeying—just not the real Plankton.

Off with His Head!: Played with during the Robo-Sandy boss fight. The first part is slamming on its body so that its head launches into the scoreboard, thus electrocuting it. The second phase involves Patrick knocking the head off, and then picking it up and throwing it into the fallen scoreboard. By the third phase, the robot wises up and grabs the head when it gets knocked off, but this allows SpongeBob to use his bubble-uppercut to strike it from below while its still trying to collect itself.

One-Man Army: SpongeBob. While Patrick and Sandy are specialization characters, SpongeBob amasses an impressive moveset throughout the game—he starts with a bubble wand strike, a double jump, a bubble uppercut and bubble slam, and later on gets the Spongeball move, the Bubble Bowling ball, and finally a guided cruise missile bubble. Patrick is only needed to throw stuff, and Sandy is needed to cross large gaps.

One-Winged Angel: After the first phase of the SpongeBot SteelPants battle, it sprouts anchor arms and expands to a ludicrously large size. Subverted, in that the second phase has you destroy it from the inside.

Opening the Sandbox: True to its collect-a-thon gameplay, the more Golden Spatulas you collect means the more levels you can unlock and play.

Plot Coupon: The Golden Spatulas. The game doesn't even try to explain why you need them to travel across Bikini Bottom, other than a lampshade hanging late in the game. See the quote above.

Punny Name: One of the first mooks you meet in the game is "Ham-mer", a robot that uses a giant ham to whack you with. Lampshaded by SpongeBob. Patrick, however, doesn't get it.

"Ham-mer (laughs) I get it!"

Rise to the Challenge: In the Goo Lagoon level, when you enter the giant sandcastle, it starts getting flooded with goo, which you have to outrun. The quote below is even the trope's quote!

SpongeBob: "Water, rising, must-get-to-higher-GROUND!"

Robot Me: Along the way, SpongeBob runs into gigantic robotic versions of his friends Sandy and Patrick, eventually leading to a final battle against a gigantic robotic version of himself and a robotic version of Plankton.

Sequence Breaking: The game has many glitches that allow you to pull off tricks like this:

Doing a Cruise Bubble and a Bubble Bowl at the same time against some surfaces (Like Teleport Boxes) makes SpongeBob slide indefinitely, allowing you to jump farther or get higher by using the Bubble Bash, a jump-type move which usually prevents movement.

Hailing a Taxi in the hub after going out of bounds and being pulled away by Hans disables bottomless pits, letting the player explore unreachable areas and cheat on slides.

Double jumping after getting knocked back by an explosion or falling in water/goo sends you flying far away, which is more of an exploit of the game's physics.

Also regarding the above case, the final boss fight involves it flipping platforms. However, you have to time your jump right without getting damaged if possible (which doesn't matter), but it you do time it right, a high launch is to be expected. Doing it at the right time at the boss's very first attack will cause SpongeBob to fly high and upward as usual, only to immediately enter the cutscene involving the boss's first defeat.

Right before the boss battle with Prawn, Mermaid Man gets to do an elongated scream of "PRAAAAAAAAAAAWN!"

The Cruise Bubble is very similar to the Visibomb Gun used by a certain Lombax, who just happened to debut a year before this game was released.

Sizable Snowflakes: The Villain Containment System containing Prawn in the Mermalair, which freeze the villains solid to trap them, constantly sheds big starry snowflakes. Even when Prawn is de-iced, snowflakes continue to fall.

Squishy Wizard: SpongeBob. His attacks aren't powered by his physical strength, but by his magic-like bubble powers. These also give him projectiles that the other characters lack.

Super Drowning Skills: No one can swim,* This is canon to the source material for Spongebob and Patrick, while Sandy's case is usually justified by any water she has to deal with being toxic in some way, like the waste at Industrial Park so touching or landing in goo (the game's answer to "water") will either send them flying back to land if close enough the ground they were on before jumping or drown them on the spot. Patrick, however, can use 'Freezy Fruits' to freeze goo to cross it.

Super Strength: Patrick displays this more than the other characters, as he is the only character who can lift up "Throw Fruit", tikis, stunned robots and Freezy Fruits. His throwing arm is quite impressive, however.

Timed Mission: Some tasks require getting to the Golden Spatula in a set amount of time. The most prominent examples are the three slide challenges with Larry, Bubble Buddy, and Mrs. Puff in Sand Mountain, and Mermaid Man's Kelp Vine challenge in the Kelp Forest.

Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: The final boss, SpongeBot SteelPants, literally sends the words "KAH-RAH-TAE" at SpongeBob after three of its lights are destroyed.

What Happened to the Mouse?: It is unclear what has happened to Robo-Plankton after SpongeBot SteelPants had been defeated. But judging by the ending cutscene where he had to contend with many Robo-Plankton duplicates, the most likely theory is that they all engaged in some off-screen battle, possibly destroying each other. Likewise, it is stated by Sandy that the robots are still running amok in Bikini Bottom, so whether SpongeBob and the gang went out to defeat the remaining robots is unknown.

White Void Room: Or Black Void Room, in the case of the Patrick section of SpongeBob's Dream.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy